Got the big kid job

Dear Me,


I has now been like forever and a day since I last wrote to...well..myself.
I have landed myself a Big 4 Accounting job, and if I may toot my own horn got offers from all 3 that I interviewed with. Right. Right.
Sad thing is, no one but highly competitive, "type 1" personality, over achieving other accountants will care about that, if anyone cares at all, but whatever. My mom was proud.


I started work and it was what I was expecting and so much more. Overwhelming and Scary and Amazing all at the same time. I capitalized these feelings to emphasize them.


Now lets dig down into why each of these emotions came into play.





Overwhelming:
Once upon a time you were a super smart little student, getting A's without really trying and just chugging down the track of life. Family members would often comment on how "smart" you were and overall you were happy with your place in this world. Your competitive nature lay dormant because a lot of other students didn't often care about grades as much.


WHAM!!
Your now at a big 4 and everyone is as smart or smarter then you. Your place in this world has been ripped out from under you and at least once a day, especially in training you question "How did I get this gig?" and "Am I suppose to know stuff already...?".


People are competing all over the place! Its like battle of the nerds without rules and if your kind of passive about your brains aka. never raised your hand in class, it is insane. Suddenly you feel pressured to put your self out there and show everyone what you know which of course leads you to question wtf do I know...


Now you find yourself actually, really trying which leads us to the emotion of Scary.






Scary:
When trying to succeed for the first time since maybe learning to walk you are hit with this sudden realization that with "trying" comes the real chance of failure.


For people who don't fail that often --> Failure = Death


jk. jk. But seriously. Learning to pick yourself up and dust of the dirt from your first epic fail smack down is hard. It also does weird things to people.


One thing I noticed about people who can't accept failure is they seem to argue about pointless things. Like the quickest way to the bathroom. No lie. Its starts off with someone messing up on one question (which no one knows about except them), and now when you say you take this hallway to the little girls room, they have to point out that "that doesn't make any sense cause blah blah blah blah blah".


This conversation doesn't make sense... Why do you care about my path to the bathroom? Oh, its because your projecting your feelings of failure and now trying to make everyone else seem like they messed up so its not just you. I get it. Word.


I personally take failure in strides because failure builds character. I think that's a quote from someone, I'm not sure who. It also probably helps that I have had multiple failures but that is a conversation for another day. Don't get me wrong, I do not like it when I am unsuccessful but I take it as a "Hey now I know" and keep on keeping on. The more you know, the better prepared you are to never make the same mistake again.




This finally leads to the emotion of Amazing.






Amazing:
This career is amazing. Words can't even describe. Don't get me wrong, its hard but if you enjoy learning something new everyday it will rock your socks off. I am not just talking about book smarts when I say learning, I mean all aspects of education. From soft skills to technical skills to random skills. Its all here.


For someone like me who did not want to leave college because I actually want to know more about more this is possibly the dream gig. You do something new everyday.
And I want to know.
I want to know the whys and the how's.
I really like how good I am at "hot" keys lol.




After getting over the feelings of overwhelmed and scared you realize how great the people you meet are. Not just your teams on your clients, but people from your starting group, people that you meet at social events.
Everyone is different and smart and funny whether intentionally or not.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not besties with everyone, but half the fun of this job is learning how to work with them. Figuring out how to make them like me, or at least work with me successfully.




Its not lame here to want the how's and why's of things. Its not uncool to stay late and get something done because it isn't right yet.




This may be the hardest, best thing I have ever done up to this point in my life hence amazing.
I may have stumbled into this career but its working for me.